The thing is, my whole family’s depressed, and has always been depressed, for as long as I can remember. It’s just that I can force myself to function more or less to the standards of the outside world, where they don’t. I can drag myself to work, I can take a shower if it’s a weekday (and I have to go to work). I can slap on a smile and strike up a conversation. Sure, I can’t do anything else–can’t buy food for myself, eat, cut my hair, clean, read, pursue a hobby, buy a phone, or do anything other than shut down and become […]
I think I’m starting to cope a little better. It used to be that I’d get sucked completely under and nearly destroy myself in times like this. Then I got to the point where I could just wearily plod on with life, slow and difficult as the terrain is. The tide’s come in again, and I feel like garbage swirling in the sea, but I think this is the first time I haven’t been afraid of it. I can take a step back and think “This is just a sign I need to adjust some things; I only need to stay calm and find out […]
I have the ability to make myself an island. When I am an island I am apart from others, and their approval, their rejections, their problems and emotions have no bearing on me. I am keenly aware that no one really knows me, just as I don’t know anyone. No person can know another. When others think they know me, it’s really only a creative interpretation of fragmented evidence–actions they’ve seen me do, words I’ve said, which aren’t even a fraction of my lived experience. Even when I try to know myself, I fall short. My memory is limited, my attempts to describe myself biased, […]
You know what’s really fantastic is lying awake at 2:30 in the morning, trying to figure out why I feel like a piece of shit. I mean, I feel like shit, obviously, with the dizziness and the nausea that comes from not sleeping for a couple of days. But why do I feel like a piece of shit? I fed my cats. I went to work, didn’t screw up or underperform. I didn’t get into any arguments, I didn’t say or do anything rude or unethical. So why, god, do I still have this leaden guilty-and-wanting-to-die feeling without any outside circumstances to justify it?
When I was in elementary school I would deliver papers early in the morning. Neighborhood yards were expansive and alien at night. I often toyed with the idea of running past the porch I was delivering to and not stopping until I reached another town, where no one knew me.
I feel the same way now. I don’t really have a future ahead of me. I’ve failed at everything I’ve tried my hand at. If I cut off all ties, went to live somewhere quiet and slow-paced and isolated from my past, perhaps I could survive. I could play at being a different person, even if […]